4 - HOW do we select a DR/BC site?

You've got your DR/BC plan in hand, and now you need to select a vendor. Based on cost, time , and location, you can go with one of the major multinational providers, or a local / regional provider.

If you plan on going with the big providers, you will probably be getting quotes from all of them. I highly recommend getting an independent consultant to assist in the Request for Proposal (RFP), and contract negotiations. And make sure a lawyer reads the contracts! A couple of things to watch out for:

• If they are providing hardware, they will state that they are providing the same or similar. I've had the similar not be able to run a mission critical application. There was no guarantee in the contract that our applications would work when tested. Also, a $5,000 line printer is NOT similar to a $20,000 band printer. If you need something they don't have, they will be happy to buy it, and lease it back to you.
• Pricing changes. I had the monthly cost double a year into the contract because I changed 2 PC servers for newer, but not much more expensive, models. They will give you the line that their pricing model is proprietary. It's actually X% of the MSRP of all the equipment on the "Schedule A" Make sure any changes to the "Schedule A" result in keeping to X%, or you will find that it's 2X%, and the initial cost was "aggressively priced to win the business". 

If you plan to use a local / regional provider things get a bit more complicated. The "big boys" will have the professionally built sites and datacenters, with top level security.  As systems became smaller over the last 30 years, and then, with the advent of virtualization, required even less space, quite a bit of datacenter space opened up. This is often what the smaller DR/BC companies are located in. Sometimes a company has downsized, or was acquired, or moved. Older datacenter space can sometimes be gotten at a discount, as it is expensive to demolish.